


Drunk the Milk of Paradise

by Phritzie



Series: Drinking Buddies [9]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Canon-Typical Violence, Dumb Arguing, F/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, PoH Headcanons, Relationship Negotiation, Roughness, Slurs, Some Plot, Soul Bond, Spoilers for Sliske's Endgame, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-16 15:05:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Chasing a moment of understanding between them once blatantly discarded, Sliske decides to try on a fresh look: emotional integrity.[content warnings: liberal swearing, dubcon / poor sex protocol (?), brief language references suicide.]





	Drunk the Milk of Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhhhh hey folks. This is technically Part 10, it's porn, and there are allusions within certain subtexts to plot devices that occur in earlier / yet to be posted parts.

_Nothing's sacred, huh?_

He spread his arms wide, wrists twisting slowly, and twirled for her. "How do you like me now? Flagless," Sliske indicated gently, pressing a hand to his chest. "And open to new frontiers."

Expression unchanging, she exhaled odiously. "You'll be the talk of the town." Brushing past him as his other arm fell limp at his side, she only allowed him to follow her into her bedroom because if he was genuinely contrite, attacking her would spell permanent exile from her life.

"I'm not feeling especially patient right now," Felix bit out, discarding her gloves on the bureau en route to her washroom and unwrapping the boxing tape with swift, jerking rolls of each forearm. "So if you have some important doomsday crap to share with me, at least give me the option to do it myself this time."  
  
He caught her wrist at the threshold to her bath and she spun immediately, snarling. " _Let go of me._ "  
  
Sliske released her, equally stormy, and braced himself against the top of the door. He leaned into her space. "You think I enjoyed it, don't you?" Strangely, he took a few deep breaths and rubbed away an emerging tick in his eye. "You think I took some sort of obscene pleasure in harming you like that?"

 _Fucking hell._  
  
"What else am I meant to believe?" Felix yelled, punching his new plum overvest angrily. He didn't budge at all, stone in stature, and her neck strained to deliver a glare. "Oh, did it hurt you _more_?" Each torrid question brought their faces a little closer together, the magnetism of aggression. "Were you all broken up over it? Did you cry?  _Really?_ I wasn't born _yesterday_ , you asshole!"  
  
Felix shuddered, nerves taxed by the effort of ignoring the way her soul's infection belied his emotions. Because oh, Gods, she was so fucking furious, but he looked like he was _bored_.  
  
"Tell me something," Sliske drawled eerily. "Why do you — someone bound in immunity from death to rise each time you fall — hold on to such reservations?" He must have been able to tell he was pissing her off, and yet, Sliske soldiered on with the harassment, teeth a menacing line, eyes a sliver of light. " _Why bother_? What's the point?"

" _Why?_ What do you mean, _why?_ Why is it terrifying? Why do I _hate_ it?" Shaking, a malformed laugh crawled out of her chest, the deep sob of someone well and truly breaking down.

Had she ever been asked a more insolent question? Sliske had to be looking for a fight. Frankly, Felix was ready to throw down, had been ready the moment he strolled in with those stupid, freebird clothes on and an attitude suggesting that all was right, that there was nothing upsetting about having one's murderer invite themselves over like an old friend.

"You do realize, for the majority of my life — let's go ahead and round that out to _two_ decades — I lived and operated under the assumption that death would be pretty fucking permanent for me?" She threw her hands up and it knocked a few bottles of pearlescent oils into her ice bath; neither of them minded the sound at all. Fizzy citrus perfumed her next ragged inhale. "That getting stabbed in the gut would spell out the end to my existence, not just a quick and easy way of getting someones horrible errand sorted?"  
  
Throughout her tirade Sliske remained fairly stoic, shoulders rigid and expression closed, but at the word 'errand' something very unsettling crossed his gaze. "Felix."  
  
They stepped forward at the same time. "Don't ' _Felix_ ' me, you shitty b—"  
  
One moment she was lifting a fist to grapple with him — mouth shaped around the harsh plosive of a rather nasty imprecation — and the next she was encircled, face lifting just in time to avoid being squashed against his chest.  
  
The rest of the air in her sails was pressed out between those arms. Enormous hands splayed hard across her ribcage, and Felix vibrated with unspent rage.  
  
"You saved the world, again. That was no errand," Sliske stated slowly, tone the bitter side of gentle. "I proclaim no grace in the method, but there was a purpose to what I did, and it was not maliciously driven. It was... unfortunate that you threw the brandy." He looked down at her trapped against him and offered her a wry smirk. "A kiss would have done it."  
  
Blurred impressions of evading his touch wavered in her mind's eye. Before she had time to consider it fully she was matching his volume, seething. "Did you ever stop to think that I might know a way downstairs not involving violent expiration?"  
  
"Do you?" He seemed genuinely curious. Felix scowled, heart hard in her ears.  
  
"No," she spat irritably, "but that doesn't change the fact your puerile ass never bothered to ask."

Sliske trembled from his center and she watched in disgust as he started laughing. "You think I'm a child." He grinned at her, a mad stretch of marked features. "I'll show you childish _._ "

Her horrified inhale at the immediate chill was lost under the huge splash that followed, drenching most of her washroom and wetting them thoroughly as he pulled them into the bathtub.

She stared at him, mouth ajar in outrage.

“ _Sliske_ –“

Shamefully, the first touch was her ruination.

Everything fell away, overcome with sensations best described as taking food after fasting; bone deep, throbbing aches that rise in the jaw at the first taste, forcing the throat to close and words to dry because the body cries louder – _too much, you were not ready_ – sensitive and long without.

It was disabling in its intensity, painful even, and she never wanted him to stop.

For several long minutes he did not. Felix struggled to keep breathing through it.

She was reining in a hungry groan when he finally relinquished her mouth. “Nymph,” Sliske accused raggedly, gasping a blessing as her teeth scraped along his jaw. “You needn't be so eager for what's freely given.”

“Because you would rather I hate this,” Felix raved, undeterred. She traced an ear with her lips, inhaling something missed there. Her fingers tightened around where they had fallen on his shoulders.

Very quickly wit was being stolen from her, the essence of madness souring impatient blood. They sank further into the tub; she felt a soft vibration in her knees as Sliske's heavy sash struck against the bottom.

His hands carried with them streaming water that sent cold rivers down the exposed skin of her back, and his confession put a curl in her toes. “No,” he whispered angrily, pulling her shivering torso closer, compressing trapped air from both longshirt and robe where they floated between them. “I would rather you begged me for more.”

Her response trembled from the dual sensation of those freezing rivulets and his burning chest. “Isn't it enough that I say your name like a harlot?”

Haltingly, Sliske chuckled. “ _Do_ you,” he breathed, lips slick with her desperation. “Is _that how_ a whore sounds?”

The shaking sigh of irritation she offered seemed to spurn him, because he began to evade the attention she lavished on the junction of his chin and throat. “I don't think so.” She pushed aside his hood and it slapped wetly against the water. He hissed under her questing teeth. “I think you need motivation.”

Knowing better than to take this sudden, coquettish rejection for genuine, Felix licked a short band across his collarbone. His shudder was an adequate tell, but there were rules to this horrible game they entertained, and one of them was to play unfair.

If Sliske wanted to make amends to her, then she would chase this feeling all the way to its conclusion.

“Thank you for confirming your status as a john,” she murmured wickedly. “I knew you were the type, but I like to have my evidence squared away.” Then she rose, grabbing the edge of the tub with her right hand for balance.

His breathing hit a depth of urgency she wouldn't have believed to exist in moments prior as he snagged the waterlogged cloth clinging to her hips.

“Going somewhere?” Sliske challenged, tugging gently.

“I was thinking about it,” Felix snarked in return. She looked down. Her body had no cover in mystery, every part outlined in sodden, transparent wool.

Sliske followed her gaze. He replied as if remarking on the weather. “Not like that, you won't be.” His waistline, patterned with those clunky ribs, made a terrible seat. But it escaped her notice under the scrutiny of his tongue on her chest. “You aren't decent.”

 _This is_ my _fucking house?_ “Says the murdering, lying, _soliciting–“_

Sliske rose out of the water a hair, cheek brushing past her own. Ripe and dark for the compliance in her limbs, his voice blew into her ear. “Slaying, charming, tempting _–“_

“Well, I _am_ tempted to hurt you,” Felix interrupted harshly, and considered struggling as he manipulated her to sit lower on him, forcing a groan out of them both.

“Then do,” he encouraged hoarsely, claws at her neck. “Hurt me.” Her hips rolled unconsciously at his implication and Sliske lost another inch of territory to their consonant gasps. “Felix.”

That was what she needed to hear, so she did it again, and again, pursuant.

“ _Felix._ ”

“Hm?” The water really was getting unbearable, barely warmed by their bodies. A cascade of tiny shivers traveled over and throughout her, making it hard to present a dignified front. “Yes?”

Small waves lapped at the rim of the tub and spilled down the sides. Clawed hands kept her face still as his came into view, eyes shuttered and glowing.

“I'm going to have you in this bathtub,” Sliske promised feverishly, “and then we're going to warm up in your insipid parlor, by your quaint little fireplace, and I'm going to have you again.”

Restraining the frank exultation that wanted to escape, she kissed one of his trailing fingers. “Sounds like you're the one begging,” Felix mocked dryly. As if her entire body wasn't clearly sending out distressed messages with every brush of skin. As if she couldn't taste her own heartbeat in her mouth.

Below the disturbed water and against his side, she pressed her thumb and forefinger together.

Sliske laughed, one hard huff that made her smile despite the way it annoyed. “Perhaps,” he admitted, leaning back to peel away the collar of her longshirt, a claw's nip sending the single button away to the depths. “I've grown a bit restless in our time apart.”

The vengeful witch that shared space with other demons in her mind let him ease it all the way down and past her elbows, revealing the ice-flushed skin of her chest and shoulders. He sighed, eyes flickering everywhere.

As soon as the sleeves were off, Felix raised her readied hand.

His expression was priceless. “No.”

“If you don't apologize for killing me, I will _never_ sleep with you again,” she threatened.

Sliske blinked down at her. “I'm—”

He adjusted the height of his tone, voice lowering solemnly.

“I'm very sorry for killing you, Felix.”

She slammed her fist into his nose with all of her might, displacing more water over the lip of the tub when she abruptly lost her seat as the Mahjarrat was thrown violently from her home by the eviction spell and right into an abyssal vortex.

It felt good.

Really, really good.

Especially because she knew that jackass too well now.

While she waited, Felix discarded her soggy clothes, found something dry to towel off with, and set the kettle to boil in her kitchen.

About ten minutes earlier than predicted he stormed back into her house, a fuming procession of darkness that blew through the halls. His wrathful entrance obliterated the wards she'd put in the staircase.

_Piece of shit calls me unstealthy._

She offered him tea, made properly and without any trace of the inept dicking around he had displayed in his... weird model home.

Sliske made a decent enough counteroffer when he laid her out on the dining room table.

Her observation came out wobblier than she would have preferred. “I'm sensing a little impatience on your end.”

He undid the ties holding his drenched robes together and they sagged apart, belt clanging to the floor. Felix pushed them the rest of the way, a damp pile of crimson, purple, and gold that would no doubt disfigure the stain of her hand-lain floorboards.

“I am _incredibly,_ ” one leg went over his shoulder, and then the other, “perhaps even _inexpressably_ sorry for killing you, and as many times as it takes for you to believe me—” He bit off a snarl when her hands surged around his neck and pulled him parallel with the polished mahogany under her. “I'll _continue saying_ it.”

“How generous,” she drawled. Her fingers dug in at his nape. “You know what pisses me off, though?” He rocked them, poised heavily between her thighs. Felix laughed angrily through the soreness radiating from her shoulders when they took more weight than they should've. “That you think sex is going to solve this. Like you can just wipe it all away. What a poor excuse for a gentleman _you_ are.”

Her skin chilled with the breeze of it as he flashed upright, sharp hands loosely encircling her shins.

“Do you really expect me to believe,” Sliske insinuated lowly, “that you _do not_ want me to fuck you?”

“I want you to fuck me until we _forget each others_ _names_ ,” she snapped, palms bracing flat as she shot forward, beyond the point of irritation. “Just don't think _for a fucking instant_ that it means we're alright _,_ that everything between us is all patched up!”

Their breathing was deafening in the never-ending afternoon quiet, Felix supported precariously by the fingers gripping the table edge below her and Sliske plainly on the cusp of rage.

“I could identify your _ashes_ ,” he hissed brokenly, “and you require such a thing of me?"

Rational thought abridged into confused segments.

"Your name is the only thing I'll never be able to forget.”

Her windpipe closed up.

Sliske's grating chuckle worsened it. His hold around her tightened a measure, teeth bared.

"It has haunted me for _thousands_ of years." He bent his neck in scrutiny of her wary shock, and spoke with the sureness of a person wronged. "It will haunt me for thousands more."

Their position took on a different meaning, compromising in a manner that didn't have any place among enemies.

She shuddered as he handled her against him, folding her in half and forcing her to choose between being upended or grabbing him again for support. 

“From your own lips, you've told me not to trust you.” Choked and on the verge of watery emotions, she swallowed around her churning pulse. “You'd be better off convincing me the world is flat.”

But that secret _had_ been released — whether it was exactly as he said or no — when she discovered his writings. Doubtlessly, he saw the horrified belief in her gaze.

“Stop wasting our time,” Sliske said testily. Inhaling slow and deep, his eyes closed as he pushed a cheek against one of the wrists she'd looped around his shoulders in her panic.

Lips parted, Felix could do nothing except watch. “I'll settle for this, arguing with you naked." The press of it, the way he looked doing it, physically pained her. "But I want the rest, Felix. All of it.”

“And what is _the rest_ , exactly?” Her anxiety bordered on hysteria. It was like Ardougne all over again, except neither of them had been drinking, and he sounded only and frighteningly sincere. She voiced her skepticism through stilted anger. “My _loyalty?_ That I have faith in you, _adorate_ you?”

Felix flinched at the intense look of apprehension he afforded her, cradling the thin skin below her thumb with his sicklepoint chin.

“That would be a fine start,” he whispered.

Echoes of a terrible night reached out and took her by the throat.

“ _You are so very precious to me, Felix.”_

_I'm crazy._

Maybe that was just as well. Every passing moment didn't feel real anyway; the ongoing harassment of her space and Felix's ongoing permittance very clearly defined how the emotional battle happening in her brain and where she _ate_ every morning would be resolved.

“ _I want you to remember that.”_

Her own idiot heart betrayed her before she could formulate an intelligent argument.

Sliske's low, droning hum tickled her nose.

Felix tried not to lose herself to it.

Part of her was still screaming to be acknowledged. A conscience that knew better, that had a memory longer than the scant seconds stretching reality between kisses.

Felix had little trouble ignoring it, releasing his lower lip to talk. “It was just a figure of speech." He followed, refusing to cease kissing her. She had to bite him to get a word in edgewise. "You're an absolute freak for thinking differently,” she muttered, face heating at his rough exhale, and confessed quietly, “I don't think I could forget your name either.”

They were too close for her to miss the faint way his eyes drooped. Sliske backed up into the nearest wall. His head struck fortuitously between two shelves, rattling her good dishware.

The effort from displacing the strain on her bad shoulders to her back was beginning to ache and Felix was, in an unforeseen turn of events, _afraid_ not only that they might be having a genuine moment but that she could ruin it completely by voicing her discomfort. And which god knew what words could do to him, she'd never ask.

The soft trip of his breath mixing with hers ended when Felix spoke. "If we're going to do this sometime before Wintumber, my injuries would appreciate it."

He laughed, and whatever it had been, it was over for her.

His hips tilted, sliding him against her stomach. She wondered if she'd hallucinated the past half an hour as Sliske inclined his head to swipe an evil smile over her lips. Sharp hands moved down her legs; raised, parted.

“I'm so simply convinced, my dear." Hardly more than a whisper, he teased at penetration. “Say yes, and I'm yours.”

There was no good reason behind Sliske saying the words _I'm yours_ to cause Felix to shudder with want, yet she did. “Thousands of years and I'm meant to think you never finessed the art of romance, ” she replied disbelievingly.

He shifted, impatient. _Or just staunchly refuse to employ it with me._ Felix huffed a short laugh, half mad and half tender.

“Yes. Gods, before next year—”

Sliske pulled her down without preamble. Her teeth clicked together through a shocked inhalation. From the tremor beneath her fingers, it wasn't a trite experience for him in the least.

 

* * *

 

When he bottomed out, she pressed her forehead into his chin and he kissed her there, a thoughtless reflex.

They were alone, in theory, but the pressure of an Elder God's expectation weighed on him always.

If it had been hard on him to seek this out before, now it was destroying him.

_How can I keep you?_

The copy wasn't enough. It couldn't do this, couldn't fire energized, burning retorts as fast as he could — or want him back, _want_ him.

He had her attention now, what he'd asked her for, but there was so much more to aspire to.

“I can't do this alone,” Sliske gasped, thrusting to a tempo anguished.

She had a bad tendency of interpretting his words literally. “It does take two or more,” Felix responded in kind, breathless. Her right leg slipped away from his shoulder, caught in the crook of his strenuous suspension. “Thought we'd just established you wanted me in particular.”

And there was a question there, one he still couldn't fully answer. Sliske turned them into the wall behind him, spine curving to bring their gazes in line. “I need you in my corner,” he whispered, dazed. _Not as lord and pawn. You just won't do that._ “Be a part of something real, Felix. Join me.”

The soft calf tensing around his elbow slid forward, reducing his range of motion as Felix fought him for leverage to exact her own pleasure. Any gratification he might have found in her short-winded answer was corrupted with concern about it's contents.

“This not real enough for you?” She shifted down demonstratively, cursing against the hollow of his throat when he flexed into it.

Sliske chuffed in response, damning gods and masters as old, inseparable pain came through in the airy laugh. “I've never felt closer to reality than when we do this,” he hissed, relishing in the tremble he could feel building in her back. “I can't control you.” It was true. _I can't._

Nothing he wanted her to do was ever carried out faithful to design. Felix always found the mistake, the loophole, the frayed end that would unravel the whole bloody tapestry.

_That kind of talent can't be taught._

“Sliske.” His eyes snapped back to hers from where they'd been listing desperately for an emotional anchor — a distraction from his whirling thoughts — in the dully inoffensive collection of plates to their left. Her cheeks were going rosy with the working of her heart, flushed hot – he could feel it, softly radiating against him. Her face withdrew from the crook of his shoulder, and Sliske realized Felix was gasping, fast and sharp, as she moved to touch him. “What are you saying?”

_Wrong question._

Harrowing upset stole his response. What little composure he had left was dashed to pieces on the insistence in the lips moving over his chinspikes, sucking at the tips. The fine-fingered pleasure creasing her brow as she did it, the winding red keel in his center.

The terrible perfection of being able to have her after long weeks of thinking the next he'd feel of her touch would be intimate in proximity only.

“ _Felix,_ ” he begged.

“Alright.” Voice shaking, she let him kiss her between the thick pants punctuating each jolt of their hips. “Fuck, _alright_ , do it.”

Sliske threw his head back before the shadows could conceal him in full.

Her excited exhale was lovely.

Hurt in his soul and rapture on his mind, Felix followed his climax in time to join him as a boneless heap on her dining room floor. 

For a few moments, everything was mercifully blank.

Then the light returned, and his need with it, just as strong as before.

The invitation. The final contestant.

Planetary alignment in endless motion, Felix's demise would be fated. He couldn't allow that.

_I thought I could._

_But I can't do this without you._

_I really can't._

It might have been her right to accept the consequences, but _he_ reserved the right to modify them.

“I'm going to change the world again.” Sliske wasn't sure if he was thinking or speaking until the fingernails skimming over the bones banding his throat paused in their contemplation and stroked hard. “Help me.”

“And I'm sure your envisioned future is fair and equitable, but no.” He could tell Felix was angry from the way she relaxed, an indication that he should let her move, that she desired to disengage from his touch.

He tensed against it, knees fanning, pressing her more firmly into the wall. "It could be. Felix, it could be more." What or of who's design was yet to be determined but Sliske was more than willing to go over that with her when the time came. "With your guiding influence to ensure it."

Her head struck the warmly stained wood, eyes closed. “ _Fuck,_ can— can you go for any period of time without trying to game people,” Felix murmured, arching into him, "or are you just totally incapable of—”

“The only game I've left to play you're already entertaining.” It poured out through the tightness in his chest, uncontrollable. Sliske minded the set in his teeth, tried not to breathe too hard. “Please look at me.”

 

* * *

 

_Gods, I knew he would do this._

_Just kick him out already, you idiot. The conversation isn't going to get any better from here._

But she could feel his sincerity.

And it was...

_It's reassuring._

Maybe months ago Felix would have been worried. But in that moment, right then, it was better than the alternative. Which would be that Sliske had gone to the extreme of actually apologizing to her only to turn around and be an absolute bastard again.

 _I'm tired,_ she begged the universe. _Th_ _ere's too much at stake, all the time._ _Just let something make sense._

When she honored his request he started rocking again, and Felix punched him in the shoulder as best she could manage. “Talk or fuck,” she demanded curtly. If she was unable to restrain the naked satisfaction loosening her tongue, then that was an acceptable loss. “Because _—_  and don't you dare get all big-headed over it — I can't focus on both.”

He looked dangerously close to ignoring her hurried caveat, eyes dark and no closer to pulling out. “I love it when you're bossy.”

 _I'm in so much trouble._ “That's your damn problem,” she sighed. Relenting to the troubled hands roaming along her shoulders, Felix allowed him to rearrange them until her legs once more were set astride his lap, ankles crossed behind his back.

But he didn't make any significant effort to continue his earlier thought. They might have remained that way, a strange and quiet bundle, if she didn't know better than to leave his abandonment of the subject alone.

His breath caught when Felix slid her index finger over the giving ridge denoting the last vertebrae in his spine, a jutting square of dark flesh over foreign bone.

“Make your case, then,” she insisted pensively. It was becoming clearer that his silence was a symptom of deep thought. As he spoke she concentrated on the tether, the thorny wisps of intention and true meaning that would escape him through the transparency they afforded her.

“You have to agree before I'm able to disclose anything to you,” Sliske admitted. “And once you do, you're in it. Not at all by my will.” He swallowed loudly, claws digging in slightly where his arms banded so long around her that they circled back to cradle her ribs. “It's a gamble, I suppose.”

 _Well, you've really sweetened the pot, haven't you._ “Can you at least guarantee that I won't regret it?”

“No. I can't.” Felix pulled back far enough to press her face into his shoulder, and she pushed down the spate of frank hope that followed his words, speaking through her damp hair. “But I'd like to.”

_Agree to the unknown, potentially inviting a fucking disaster, or scramble to figure it all out myself. As per usual._

Neither option was ideal. In fact, she would prefer to convince him that whatever he planned on doing wasn't worth it. But the conviction in his mannerisms and the fact that Sliske had found it important enough an issue to raise during the first sex they'd had in weeks compelled her to make the greater mistake.

“I'm listening,” Felix said slowly.

He unfurled an arm and lifted her face. “You have to _agree_ to join me.” The yellow burn of his irises flickered around, searching. “I need an explicit promise.”

“And in return, you'll explain why?” The way his lips ghosted across hers felt perilously akin to commitment already. “Not that it isn't abundantly obvious – I still don't trust you.”

Sliske's mouth twisted into something approaching distaste. His pelvis crooked.

“Stop it,” she snapped. He did it again and she tried to fight fire with coal, rocking down until they were flush and she could prevent the movement of his hips with the strength in her thighs. Retaliatory claws pricked the tender flesh below her jaw. “I'm serious. You're horrible and I'm right up to here with it.”

“End my suffering, then — say no,” he growled, markings taut with vexation.

“So fucking dramatic.” His disagreeing huff made her angrier. “ _Gods._ I'll join your stupid fan club. Alright? I'll join you.”

Sliske stilled.

And then he laughed and  _hugged her._

"I'm so glad," he whispered, every part of him tight around her in elation.

A few things happened before Felix could transmit an appropriately scandalized expression from her brain to her mouth. 

Firstly, her house was gone, replaced by a rapid series of images that looked like the greenery of palms and climbing vines, the ocean's deep blue, whitecapped waves, and flashing golden sands. She saw something that looked very sharp and long before the images reversed; nothing more than a shadowy blur.

Secondly, Felix was flat on her back and Sliske was leaning over her, pleased and running his hands up her abdomen.

They were just on the border of her property now. Beyond sight, past the grove of pines she'd encouraged to grow, there were a few sparse hills that would round into nothing, the end of the space enfolding the arcane plane her home was built upon. Perpetual twilight filtered through the needles and leaves around them, painting his downturned face in dusty orange patterns, and the sky above bowled out a juicy pink overhead, impossibly wide and artificial.

Her hair fluttered into a narrow fan from where it had been disturbed in the flight. She pried at him furiously as those hands moved higher, forcing her shoulders into the thick grass. “ _What the hell was that_?”

“Had to check on something, didn't want to leave you,” Sliske returned, beaming. “I'm happy to report that while we are devastatingly short on time, there is enough left over not only for me to clue you in, but for us to have a wonderfully large quantity of sex.” He moved away only to thrust forward, and her ankles jerked in her surprise, shifting through the draping ferns at their feet. “I hope you don't mind.”

“ _I do mind_ ,” Felix answered tightly. “You are such a _heathen_ , shit— can't we talk _first?_ ”

“But we've done so much of that,” he lamented, fully lost in the act. An aching sigh escaped him. " _Gods_ , you feel _fantastic_."

Felix stared through heavy eyes. She had never heard him blaspheme before. She strained to speak through the rough catch in her words, impelled to partake by the allure of his praise as effortless slides and an absolutely sordid, smacking staccato undercut their harsh breathing. "Clue me in?"

"Felix," Sliske pleaded, a tall bend of dark gray. "Please don't ruin this."

If the sight of him strung taut with desire inside of her wasn't a persuasive enough argument to shut up and wait, then Felix had never been more regretful of her dogged nature. He was quickly overturning her cautious inclination to cash in right away on his deal. And as the seconds ticked past, she grew closer to surrender.

A compromise seemed fair.

"The— oh, fuck, I'll take the short version," she despaired, high with need. Groaning a rough assent, he ground into her, hands pulling her in as he worked her down into the moist earth. Felix attempted an amendment, mirroring his clipped movements. "Sh-shit, I meant—"

His inflamed whine of, "I _know_ ," nearly broke her as Sliske descended, elbows planting in a slate frame around her face where it was turned by overwhelming sensation toward the green blades shooting up around them. Expression lax, he dropped a kiss on her cheek. "Tilt your— tilt up, a little—"  
  
She did, smoothly hooking a heel into one of the ridges patterning his back. When Felix inhaled she could smell the clover dotting the lawn and sweet grass tickled her lips. _We're going to ruin the landscaping_. "Like that?"  
  
" _Yes_ , darling," he hissed, reeling on in compact drives, voice a tangled cocktail of spite and appeal. "How does this feel? You never ask me for—"

She was constructing a positive reply when Sliske hit the back wall. Her chest rose reflexively to escape it, groping for purchase around the rousing ache even as her hips duplicitously sought his out for more.  
  
He took in her reaction breathlessly, curious, and did it again. The pressure of it was next to unbearable. Felix clapped reprimanding palms around his waist. " _Don't._ "  
  
Apparently her staying power was weak enough to fail, because Sliske bit his lip and repeated the offense, chuckling wickedly at her overstimulated whimper. "Don't what, Felix?" Eyes alight with evil, he dragged a slick tongue from neck to temple, renewed in his quest to earn her irritation.

_Oh, you absolute fucker._

She hated how free he was being with her. Generous, selfish... lusciously perceptive. So close to exactly what she needed to come apart.

"Get on your back," she demanded, a murderous whisper.  
  
It was like she'd hexed him. In an instant, Sliske rolled them closer to the water feature fonting a clear spring at the base of one of her balsams, grin gamely and broad. " _Forceful_ ," he purred extravagantly. "I _like_ that."  
  
She fought against the disorientation, the provocative feeling of him pulling them together again from where they'd momentarily lost contact. Felix pried his hands away. Needing that insinuated authority, she brought them to her lips, kissing the space where his thumbs met. When he made an inarticulate sound of endorsement, she dragged them down to her thighs and set a new pace. He matched it with ardor, rising into her, and suddenly she was struck by the hazy thought  _he knows what you ask for in bed._

Dragging her eyes away from his, her hands tripped over the clawtipped fingers depressing her flesh and found the dark planes composing his chest. Voice caught around a husky encouragement, she watched his teeth scrape a curse from his bottom lip.

It pushed her over the plateau. Flush from her face to her sternum, Felix spilled a mess of language undoubtedly damning and relied on him to hold them together as nerve-deep, blistering waves wracked her in her entirety.

Dimly, through the thickest part of her climax, she heard the warm burr of someone urgently restraining themselves and felt the firm seat of their bodies being forced still.

When she limped back into awareness, Sliske was staring down the long line of his torso, entranced. "I'm going to need to see that again," he insisted, eyes pinching shut. "Maybe after I— after."

 _Gods_ , he looked destroyed, clutching her and working back up to a brisk rhythm. Like this was just something they did, pleasing each other to madness, because they had, because this whole fucking affair of theirs had a bond of unspoken knowledge she still had no frame of reference to—

Responsibility swung by for another go at holding her attention. 

 _Changing the paradigm. Strapped for time._ It took Felix a long moment to remember what she'd wanted to ask, riding his impatience and not all figuratively. " _Is there_ a short version?"

Sliske hesitated around the word 'yes,' breathing haggard.

Still ahum with afterglow, she threw a little heat into the reminder. "You promised me information."

Squinting tensely up at her, he relented.

"Jas is coming to destroy the world."

Felix choked around her reply, movement stalling from shock.

" _Excuse_ me?" He arched into her demandingly, the ridges of his brows low with disappointment at her pause. "Jas? As in _the Elder_ God, the _eldest_ Elder God? _Why_?"  
  
Sliske made a truly pained noise. "Felix." His neck curved away from the grass, chin high. "Why _yourself."_ Reviling the thin moan drawn out of him by her retreat, she slowed until he was barely entering her, fingers firm around his abdomen in expectance. "I was— Yes, _that_ one," he hissed. "Is there another? Do your proclivities extend to _torture_?" He wet his lips, mouth open. "I can abide it, but I'd love _some leeway right now_."

"You can have whatever you want as soon as you clarify _literally all_ of what you just said," Felix remarked shakily, knees unsteady. 

 _An Elder God is going to destroy the world._ It flew in a loop through her head. _Xenia's vision._ A concept too absurd to be true, and thus proved, by it's source. 

He spoke deviously _. "Whatever_ I want, you say? _"_  The exposed column of his throat contracted hard, and she watched as his hands sank into the turf.  
  
They must have made a ridiculous picture. Naked and staring each other down on the precipice of his completion, in the shade of a sun that would never set. Felix wasn't looking forward to the way it would look in hindsight.

But until then.  
  
"Whatever you have the creativity to realistically weasel out of me," she clarified. His hips yearned upwards and her position faltered a bit.   
  
Sliske narrowed luminous eyes and growled. "I've been tasked with ensuring the extermination of every god on Gielinor."

Nothing in the world could have prepared her for that.  
  
_Great fucking Guthix_.

"You **_what_** _?"_  
  
"Failing that," he continued quickly, lifting from side to side in search of more friction, "I have to convince her not to revise the entirety of time and space, sending this corner of the universe to a place before Gielinor was created. The Final Revision."  
  
She was so upset Felix almost wished she were speechless. "Jas is going to rewrite all of history and you've been burning daylight crafting puzzles and trying to _get in my pants?_ "

Withdrawing stern claws from the loose dirt, Sliske wrestled her as she tried to separate from him, preventing her from getting up. "That feels absolutely divine," he wheezed, "but I'd like for you to stay."

His confidence was unthinkable. Felix couldn't believe it. Bereft of patience, she summoned her filthiest insults and slapped him full in the face.

Ever-difficult to deter Sliske trapped her with preternatural strength, smudging light grass stains along her waist. "I've some choice words for what you are _as well_ , my dear _—_ and do you see me throwing them around?" His unimpressed rush of breath stirred the humid air. "She's weeks away. The eclipse approaches," he murmured heatedly, capturing the wrists raining down largely ineffective blows. "So be honest. Would you like me to have been staunchly _not_ pursuing you, twiddling my thumbs in chaste celibacy and reformulating plans already in practice?" 

"Could you have done _anything_ to stop it before the point of _unmaking_ was brought up," Felix berated sharply, face deformed from the severity of her frown, "or are you just the stupidest person I've ever met?"

"It wasn't stupid to want you," he rejoined cuttingly. "But perhaps your point has merit." Sliske lifted her off of him, dragging her against the rugged underside of his sex in the process and somehow managing to make the unclean maneuver highly disparaging. "I should have invested my time in someone with manners."

 _How have I not killed you._ "So we've managed to establish that you have twisted priorities and that I'm a craven barn animal," she sneered, nails scalloping the skin below his collarbone. "Do you have any other stunning revelations for me?"

"Plenty," Sliske shot back. He stole the air from her lungs with one rude push; she caught herself on bruised elbows in time to be disrespected further. Standing and brushing bits of greenery from underneath his claws, he looked down on her, breathing rapid and short. "If you don't want this, I'll stop."

Sliske pulled her to her feet and Felix made a face as it forced glossy trails of fluid to run down her thighs. "If you need me to impart every damning secret I've been keeping from you, I'll spill it all," he stated, hands listing toward himself as though to touch before disappearing behind his back.  
  
Felix wasn't sure what she needed, but he'd just made it cruelly apparant what she wanted from him. "Let's not get crazy," she muttered.   
  
He continued in a wry tone, stepping forward until she once more had to crane her neck to see his face. " _Just_ — let me _have_ you for a moment. Don't think so hard about it. But I do expect a _clear,_ " he emphasized, eyeteeth flashing in terse warning, " _committed_ answer, because I can only tolerate you fruitlessly teasing me for so long."

Felix huffed indignantly and whatever feature he possessed that passed for a laryngeal prominence worked around a moan, eyes darkening.

"Unless you only intend to use my body for your carnal satisfaction," Sliske whispered sinfully, twitching at her. "You sick, delicious little thing."

Cold certainty settled low in her throat. "Oh, you're fine with that, are you?"

"I've found it can be excruciatingly good," he confirmed.  
  
She fixed him with an indecent look, hand finding her hip despite the clear lack of authority in her debauched nudity, the hair drying frizzy and improper around her neck, and the fact that no matter what, he would always tower over her.  
  
Sounds from the nearby pond lay just beneath the soft lilt of Felix's new compromise. "Tell you what. Explain how I can even contribute to preventing, or mitigating, this... apocalypse," she said, gesturing between them flippantly with her free hand. "And I'll be your damn consort."  
  
Sliske considered her with poorly restrained rapacity. "Only if you promise to say, ' _I'll be your consort_ ,' in a much nicer way," he bartered. "Preferably louder. And while some blessed part of me is inside of you."  
  
"Does your soul count?"  
  
"Absolutely not."

 


End file.
